The phone starts vibrating for a third time. She reaches across to pick it up, but Bex snatches it away and turns it off. Kate knows Bex is right. Jake is her past and she must keep moving forward.

‘Tell me about today,’ Bex says. ‘What happened.’

Kate takes her through her swim out to the platform, playing down the cramp attack, the possibility that she might have been poisoned, but her mind is still on Jake, trying to work out why he’s calling her so late and so persistently. Something’s wrong. He wouldn’t keep phoning. She knows him too well. Perhaps his elderly mother has died. They were close and Kate misses seeing her. Jake would want her to know.

‘You really frighten me sometimes,’ Bex says. ‘The things you choose to care about in life. You seem more troubled by Rob’s choice of coffee than the fact that you nearly drowned today.’

‘He told me tonight that he has a flat white when we’re apart because the taste reminds him of me.’ She thinks again of the relief she felt on the phone.

‘That’s alright then. I’ll try not to think that I wasted my bloody time at Paddington.’

‘You didn’t. And I’m very grateful.’

‘Maybe you should see someone, Kate. You know, your dishy Dr Varma.’

‘I saw him earlier today.’

‘You never said. I would have caught an earlier train.’

‘He’s married, Bex.’

Bex has met Ajay once and flirted so much with him it was embarrassing. Ajay was having none of it.

‘Did you tell him about Rob? About believing that he’s…’ Bex hesitates. ‘That he’s been replaced by a double? I was thinking about that on the train. That’s not a normal thought, Kate. Not normal at all.’

‘I will. I’m seeing him again at the end of next week.’

‘So you didn’t tell him.’

Jake is still trying to ring her. She can feel it.

‘Are you OK?’ Bex asks as Kate gets up from her seat.

She knows she should tell Bex about the court case, that Rob thinks her coffee might have been spiked, but she needs to speak to Jake first.

‘Just going to the loo. Back in a sec.’

She walks into the kitchen, sweeping up the cordless telephone from the sideboard with the deftness of a thief. Once inside the bathroom, she locks the door and dials Jake’s number, pressing the keys as quietly as she can. It’s engaged. She tries again. Still engaged.

‘You alright in there?’ Bex is outside the door.

‘Fine. Won’t be a sec.’

She loves Bex, her concern for her, but sometimes she wishes she’d cut her some slack.

‘Don’t want you cramping up again,’ she says.

‘I’m OK. Honestly.’